Monthly Archives: May 2015

Yesterday gem and I went to Hollywood for a Kindred Throats show! We saw them at the Coup de Comedy Festival, and they were amazing. They’re the sketch comedy / musical duo that sang to gem, and they were the recipients of gem’s cookies!

Before the show, we also so much food at Hollywood Thai Restaurant. Oh my god, it was delicious.

Eventually I dragged my bloated why-oh-why-did-I-eat-so-much body to the Comedy Central Stage at The Hudson Theatres. gem made a really awesome card for them and, of course, more cookies.

The show was hilarious! I don’t really know how to convey how funny it is, because describing it as funny songs doesn’t really do it justice. There’s audience interaction as well, which is comedic gold. Their opening song was about how the people in the back thought they were safe. During the song, they proceeded to move everyone from the back row closer. Luckily we were already sitting in the front.

On the way out, we saw Todd, one of the members, who recognized her and thanked her for coming all the way out! Woo! She was wondering if they’d recognize her, but I’d sure recognize someone who seemed to always bring me cookies. I might be in love with food.

Memorial Day weekend was pretty packed. In fact, it started before the actual weekend. Duncan and I went to happy hour at Gina’s Pizza Wednesday, which turned into a fun night. While Thursday was a nice day, Friday was busy again. That was Anela’s graduation, which I already talked about in another post.

However, when I got home, I found that my roommates were enjoying some cocktails by the fire pit outside with music. We ran out of wood to burn, so eventually Duncan started finding wood to burn in the garage – a single plank, pieces of old furniture, etc. His sword also made an appearance in an attempt to cut some wood. Not only did that fail, but the sword got damaged.

Saturday night we had some people over to hang out. Alex came over, and while Haley didn’t make it, she did send a chocolate pecan pie with him. Delicious!

On Sunday I went to Melody’s yoga class, which was fantastic. Later that evening, I met up some friends. Matt, Katie, and Marc were in town from Fremont so we had dinner at Umami Burger and went bowling. I was not very good at bowling, but it was great seeing them! It’s too bad I don’t get to see them more often, but I’ll actually get to see them in a few days when I go up north and stay with them for the weekend!

Monday was Memorial Day, so of course we had a barbecue.

gem created the jalapeño bacon s’more. Besides being incredibly spicy with all the seeds, it was very good.

Did you see the piñata at the top of the post? Jessica brought a piñata. Heck yeah. We took turns swinging at it with my Anime Expo Yaoi Paddle without any of that spinning around or blindfolding nonsense. To make up for it, we had some rules about how to swing, and we also agreed to all take it easy for the first round so we could all get a chance to hit it.

When the loop ripped off his head, we had to attach him through his butt using the hole that’s for stuffing the candy in him.

When that tore too, we reattached him again with a sort of makeshift noose from duct tape.

gem earned first blood.

When the legs were torn from the rest of the body, we decided to burn them.

gem had to show off her spoils of war.

Jessica made the candy pour out, and then it was time to collect!

Once all the candy was bashed out of it, we roasted the carcass. I felt like a true Greek – a feast and a burning sacrifice.

It’s a beautiful campus, and I liked how diverse the people were. The Honorable M. Margaret McKeown, Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit gave the address. She was really fascinating and a great speaker. My favorite part was that she talked about it’s good to give people food. “And when people have food in their mouth, they can’t yell at you.” Great advice.

The booklets also contained a list of highest course grades. Each student who was awarded the highest grade in a class that semester got their name listed in the book along with the classes. That’s such a cool idea. If I could have participated in that, I think I would have pushed a lot harder in college. It’s no surprise that Anela was listed!

As soon as it clicked that the slightly mispronounced name called was Anela’s, I tried to get a picture while cheering loudly. If you squint hard enough, I swear that’s her.

Speaking of illegible photos…

They were showing tweets that contained the hashtag #ChapmanU on the screens. That says “@TheUser You’re the best, Anela! Congrats! #champanu”

Here’s Anela and gem after the ceremony.

And here’s the three of us. Anela’s holding the Ace Attorney congratulatory card gem made for her! Pretty sweet.

After the ceremony, we sampled some of the food they were serving before moving our cars to go to dinner. This is an Anela-car sandwich – her Toyota RAV4 sandwiched between our Toyota Camrys!

We treated Anela to Go Goo Ryeo Korean BBQ for a graduation dinner. It was super tasty! I think the three of us seem to have a thing for Korean BBQ 🙂 No complaints here.

It was a really great evening, and I’m glad I was there. Congratulations, Anela!

I like tomato, but I thought it was too much tomato with the possibility of causing the outcome to be too wet. I only used about a third of the tomato. I also ended up using only half the sweet onion showed. I did use the turkey sausage, all the green onion, and all three slices of thick cut bacon. I added a handful of spinach and half a cup of the reduced fat mild cheddar.

This is where I got worried that the muffin tin was too full.

After 27 minutes at 375 degrees, it was time to pull them out with my bear paw oven mitt.

Awww, look how cute the little guy is.

It was super delicious! Each one is about 254.4 calories with 20.3 grams of fat, 1.9 grams of carbs, and 17.6 grams of protein.

The OC Night Market was last weekend, and I ate so much. But first I looked at these cute crocheted buddies!

And these! Super awesome!

Someone took a sweet boobsnap of Jon. Who was it? No one knows. But it wasn’t me. And actually I do know.

We started our eating adventure with garlic crab fries and a hot dog with nori and spam. We got in line for more deliciousness, but the line was taking forever. After ordering, Duncan and I decided to grab food somewhere else while Jonathan and gem waited for our food. On the way to our soup inside a roll things, Duncan took my picture in this Instagram prop. He also found $10 on the ground. I think he won.

It took an hour, but we finally got our food – delicious pork belly in that gloriously soft and wonderful bread. Yeah, it took a while, but honestly, I’m also there to socialize and have fun, and that’s exactly what I did while waiting.

We also managed to eat sushi nachos from Samurai Burrito and a pork taco before getting to dessert (my favorite).

First up for dessert was the Horchocolata Delight from Orion’s Cookery, consisting of chocolate mousse, horchata tapioca pudding, dulce de leche dipper, and cinnamon-sugar whipped cream. Yeah, it was delicious. I bet I could eat chocolate and tapioca puddings together to simulate it!

After that, I had a Dirt Cup from Ice Cream Garden LA. The dirt cup is ice cream served in a plastic plant pot, covered in crushed Oreos to simulate dirt, and topped with a gummy worm and a sprig of mint. Amazingly cute and very delicious to boot! Not shown was my final dessert – some of Duncan’s funnel cake.

gem decided to work in the Hug Deli, which was a really interesting booth. They have a menu of various hugs – the Warm + Fuzzy Hug, Bear Hug, Beverly Hills Air Kiss hug, Gangsta Hug, The Long Uncomfortable Hug, and the Group Hug, each priced at two compliments. If no one’s working the booth, you can walk inside, put on the apron, and start serving up hugs! You can find Mikey’s Hug Deli on Facebook!

Rather than get a hug from gem, Duncan went to the other guy. At least he got a hug!

gem did really well. It was fun listening to people work up the courage to order a hug. One guy seemed a bit shy and wasn’t sure what compliments to give. His friends were talking about her smile.

“Tell her she has a nice smile.”

“She does have a really pretty smile!”

Pretty cool.

I was a little hesitant, but I had to get behind the counter too.

I only got one order. Thanks Duncan! I gave him a huge hug and swung him around a bit. His compliments were that he liked my chest hair and that I had nice glasses. You too, buddy!

The Coup de Comedy Festival 2015 was this weekend, hosted by UCI’s Improv Revolution – a four day festival celebrating all sorts of comedy. Wednesday opened with Improv Revolution and Live Nude People playing together, referring to themselves as Nude* Revolution. Great name, and great comedy.

It was followed by The Resistance. They were amazing last year, so I was really looking forward to them this year. The video at the top depicts a flashback scene they performed of a pirate’s curse. The Resistance improvises action movies. This one was about kids finding a skeleton with a map to a treasure, full of karate, the nerd winning the girl, and useless adults. I didn’t realize until that day that Derek Mears, who I had just seen with Dr. God, was performing with them. Awesome!

Here’s another scene near the end – a karate montage.

The night ended with Delicious Moments, a duo who switches characters rapidly, usually going back and forth between roles during a single conversation. It’s, uh, long-form, I suppose. They don’t really do scenes exactly. They just talk on stage about their show, and then things happen. It’s pretty funny.

Thursday started with Improv X, but I didn’t catch it. My comedy Thursday started with KINDRED THROATS! They don’t style their name like that or anything. I just really loved them.

Kindred Throats consists of Kevin Stafford and Tom Risenmay who play guitar, sing, and generally act hilarious. Unlike most of what I’d seen so far at the festival, Kindred Throats performed sketch rather than improv (although bits are of course improvised).

This was the only show gem could attend, and I’m glad she did. During one part of the show, Kindred Throats began talking about various historic seats in the theater, including the two seats in the front for lovers. One pointed out gem and me and while the other pointed out gem and the guy sitting on her other side. They kept amusingly confirming that they were looking at the same two people while obviously being in disagreement until settling on gem and the other guy.

Once they were singing directly to gem, I had to record it, and you can see the video above. Basically, they’d get to parts in the song where they’d talk about something the lovers would do, and then they’d abruptly stop and stare until they did it. God it was funny, and I think gem really enjoyed it too.

After the show, I watched Sparks to Fire, which was a bit stand-up, a bit improv, and… a man eating a cactus?

L.A. Beast was there. I hadn’t heard of him, but he’s a competitive eater who also eats strange things on YouTube for entertainment. I saw him eat a dozen raw eggs, including the shells, a whole, raw cactus, and three ghost peppers. He apologized to the women in the audience, noting that his male fan base is much larger than his female fan base.

After the show was Stand-Up on the Spot with Jeremiah Watkins, but I skipped it. I did, however, see Kevin and Tom from Kindred Throats outside getting ready to leave. gem was on her way back to UCI, hoping to bring them homemade cookies. After telling them about the cookies, they agreed to stay and wait, so I had a chance to talk to them for a bit.

They really were in disagreement over who to pick. One wanted to pick gem and me and realized we were there together, while the other wanted to choose gem and the other guy because the other guy was using his phone to record the entire time. They said sometimes they choose people who are obviously together, sometimes they choose obvious strangers, and once they just chose two guys who were clearly just friends.

I think they enjoyed their cookies!

I didn’t attend Friday at all. I missed some Open Mic, Red Door & Triumph, The Mechanicals, OBGY-Not Sketch Show, and Stand-Up with Zoe Rose Moacanin.

Saturday was the last day (and a bit annoying due to breaks). It began with Second City’s Really Awesome Improv Show followed by a two hour break.

I spent that break taking a picture with Peter the Anteater.

Two pictures, actually.

And I also read Scott Pilgrim and messed around on my phone.

I also found this graffiti. THIS ART: FULL OF POOP?

After the break was Doctor Who Live! – an improvised episode of Doctor Who. I don’t really care for Doctor Who, but it was still entertaining. After another two hour break during which I read more, I watched the Count Gumdrop improv performance, which was pretty funny. The night ended with Impro Theatre’s Chekhov UnScripted and Revolutionary Comedy Award honoring Keegan-Michael Key, but I bailed on those to head to my friend’s place for a game night.

I went to a potluck for the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight this weekend. I’m disappointed that Pacquiao didn’t win but not surprised. The food was really tasty though!

I made jalapeño poppers and bacon-wrapped dates yet somehow didn’t take a single picture of them. My parents had pasta salad, hummus, pita, chips, salsa, cookies, and candies. Mark and Elena brought ribs. Duncan baked snickerdoodles while Collin brought garlic chicken bites. I was cooking at the same time as Collin and got to try them repeatedly during the cooking process. Tasty!

gem brought pork buns, two flavors of homemade ice cream, and homemade guacamole. The buns had egg in them too and were delicious!

She also brought balut! Non-Filipinos always seem so scared of this, but it was tasty! I read about how different cultures season it differently, so I’m pretty curious to try it again with some variations.

Pete also decided he didn’t want his Ghostbusters sign anymore, so it came home with me! It lives in the living room now.

This was originally used during the chili cook-off. Joseph made a chili with ghost chilies, so Pete the sign for us to use. Since then, it’s been sitting outside at his house. Pretty sweet!

It was a really fun potluck, and I got leftovers too! Even Sumo and Angel got to eat some delicious ribs. Yay!

Friday night was ImprovCity’s Comic Book Day Show, and it was a lot of fun. The cast all dressed as comic book characters. There’s Alex in the center in his Rocket Raccoon costume. It’s definitely not Bark.

They gave out free comics too! I got Legendary Star-Lord #5 and Star Wars: Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir #1.

The show was hosted by Lumpy the Space Princess Lumpy Space Princess, and she did a good job as her too!

Here’s another shot of the performers. I wanted to ensure one with Speed Racer’s helmet got posted too. After the show, a lot of us went to BJ’s. I got a nice low calories salad, a martini, and then a delicious and unhealthy pizookie.

Today’s actually Free Comic Book Day, so I headed to Alakazam. I got the Jurassic Strike Force 5 one-shot, Terrible Lizard, Bodie Troll, Fight Club, and BOOM! Studios Ten Year Celebration 2015 Free Comic Book Day Special. I’m excited to sit down with these later, but I have plans tonight. I just finished preparing food for the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight potluck. Hopefully Pacquiao wins!

Last weekend was full of improv (as any good weekend should be). First, I saw HIStory/HERstory at ImprovCity again as well as their Thursday Night BS (Basic Scenes). The Thursday Night BS was one of the best improv sets I’ve ever seen. I felt like I was lagging behind, like I was still cracking up at the last funny thing when the new one came along. So. Good.

I saw the premiere of HIStory/HERstory on April 2, but gem didn’t get a chance to see it. I decided to see it again with her. This time it was shorter as they’d cut some skits. It was still great, and I understood why they cut what they did. You can see the Sasquatch family above. It still has a performance left at Second City Hollywood on May 6, so you can still check it out!

On Friday I went to the second night of the OC Improv Fest, hosted by Spectacles Improv Engine. I missed the first night because I wanted to see ImprovCity. I went with gem to this too, and we ran into James while we were there.

The night opened with Well-Behaved Villains, a team from La Habra High School. Following that was CIA – the Center for Improv Advancement. These were two teams I’d never seen. Next was IFL, which is always good.

After that was Big Yellow Taxi. I’d seen them before but was glad to see them again. They had Josh as the guest driver.

My favorite Spectacles team, The Mechanicals, played next. Who knew Alex would make such a good princess?

Jetzo.

Jetzo was amazing. They’re a two-man team performing kabuki-inspired improv. There was a lot of music and interpretative dance, and it was freaking hilarious.

There was also strange grinding on Michael.

He seemed just a tad red. I assume that he meant he was having a good time.

I don’t really remember why they got undressed at the end, but, yup, they did. I would love to see Jetzo more in the future.

Following Jetzo was Kind Strangers from iO West performing Tennessee Williams, and after them was KanYay! West. I called them “the cutest team” when I saw them at the OC Improv Fest 2013. Then there was White Women, comprised of seven very funny black men.

And then Rococo. Rococo was an improv troupe that included former Live Nude Lilan Bowden. I kind of stared in disbelief before looking over at gem. She just looked back and then said “Is that Lilan?” I was hoping to say “hello,” but I couldn’t find her later. I messaged her on Facebook the next day to tell her how excited I was to see her perform and that was a fan of LNP. I later messaged Alex and gem. “Lilan responded to me and I feel like a teenager girl who can’t. Even. Which is also how I felt when I first met you, Alex, so there’s that.”

The evening ended with Ranger Danger and the Danger Ranger, one of my favorite teams. How can two people be so funny?

I didn’t get a lot of pictures on the third night, but here’s one of Dr. God. I’ll get to them. I came with gem again, and we also ran into James.

The first block consisted of The Lobby, Galapagos, Holiday Road, Pick and Roll, and Now Improv. I particularly enjoyed Holiday Road.

The next block opened with Paul Vaillancourt’s Man Vs. Movie. It was a one-man, long form improvised action movie, and it was pretty great. Red Door followed, who I saw at last year’s Coup de Comedy and liked a lot. Pawn Takes Queen was third before Dr. God performed.

Dr. God has an interesting formula. After getting a suggestions, they monologue on the suggestion based on something from one of their lives, and they do improv based on that. I saw them last year and enjoyed them even more this year. If my memory is correct, it seemed like they did less monologues and more improv this year, but regardless, awesome stuff. Derek Mears was with them, an actor and stuntman who also performed at ComedySportz.

In the photo above, there’s a visit to the gynecologist.

Derek Mears must have been talking about something large.

And then he joined the scene to play the part of a tennis net.

That plank seems to have bad form… haha it was great.

Here’s an interesting twist. For most of us, the festival had a fee, but not for gem, who won $50!

The last block of the night opened with FlySpace. He spent an entire scene getting pet there.

After FlySpace, The Lusty Horde perform a long-form scene as an improvised sci-fi/fantasy scene. They were awesome, but it was getting too late for me. We left after The Lusty Horde, unfortunately missing Outside Dog and The Illegitimate Stage.

It was a great weekend for improv, and I have more tonight and this coming week. Woo!